Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ pairs Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell as Margot and Jim, who have their eyes on the same wedding venue. The Palmetto House is a highly sought-after wedding venue, so when it is double booked on a weekend, Jim and Margot start fighting each other to push the other person out. Jim’s daughter is getting married there, while Margot wants her sister’s wedding to go without a hitch. However, things get heated, and some very bad moves are made. One of those moves includes an alligator, which looks pretty real. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Alligator in You’re Cordially Invited was Very Close to a Real One
The events in ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ take place on a property by the lake, which is known to have alligators. When Jim finds one, he decides to use it to make things worse for Margot. By this time, a lot of damage has been done, some of it being unintentional, and he has lost his mind so much that he gets the alligator out of the water and into Margot’s bedroom. This leads to a pretty hilarious scene that ends with Margot getting bit by the alligator. Fortunately, the alligator in the movie was not a real one but was animatronic.
Reese Witherspoon revealed that someone on the team proposed the idea of using a real alligator. They suggested that the alligator was tame and very well-behaved and could be used for all sorts of scenes, especially the one where Will Ferrell’s character has to hug it. However, the actor immediately refused the idea, and luckily for him, the rest of the cast and crew agreed to it. While it would have been interesting to have a live alligator on the set, the danger would still be there, no matter how tame the trainer promised it was. In the end, an animatronic alligator was made, which could deliver movements similar to a real alligator and get the job done without any danger.
Will Ferrell revealed that working with the fake alligator was also a challenge in itself because it was quite heavy. The actor had to wrestle the thing and carry it, which he described as a taxing and exhausting thing, leading to a very tiring shoot. Interestingly, he has had a history of wrestling all sorts of animals in his previous films. He has fought a raccoon, a bear, a shark, and a cougar, to name a few. For wrestling the alligator, Ferrell joked about being inspired by Steve Irwin’s old videos and how watching them made him wish he could someday wrestle an alligator. Lo and behold, his wish has come true, even if with a fake alligator.
Read More: You’re Cordially Invited Mid-Credits Scene, Explained: Will Jim and Margot Get Married?
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